Most of the enterprises today manage their day-to-day activities using computer-based applications. These computer-based applications are either developed by enterprises in-house or are purchased from companies that have expertise in building applications. Usually, enterprises prefer to purchase developed applications from Information Technology (IT) companies that have the expertise of developing applications. These enterprises either completely rely on IT companies or rely on IT companies for big and complex applications and develop only simpler applications in-house.
There are many reasons why enterprises prefer to purchase developed applications over developing applications in-house. One main reason is that developing applications in-house requires expertise that these enterprises often lack. If the enterprises develop applications in-house, they need to invest in hiring and maintaining experts for developing applications. This can become cumbersome and expensive, in the long run considering issues such as hiring the right experts, retaining the experts, providing adequate and continuous work to these experts, and providing training. Even after all these arrangements, enterprises often are unable to develop applications of the quality that are developed by IT companies with expertise in this field. Making the above-mentioned arrangements is not only cumbersome and expensive in the long run, but it also diverts the focus of enterprises from their main business.
IT companies usually develop applications that are applicable for multiple enterprises. For example, an ERP application is useful for many enterprises that work in different fields. Another example is a banking application which is useful for all banks. These applications are quite complex and thorough because they need to cater to different enterprises. The only limitation associated with such applications is that they are not customized according to a particular enterprise's requirements. For example, a banking application, such as Finacle® by Infosys Technologies, Ltd., has been purchased and deployed by many banks. The user interface provided in Finacle® has been created in accordance to the common requirements of different banks.
To address this limitation, enterprises customize the purchased application by taking the services of an IT company or by employing a team internally to so the same. This requires additional cost and effort. For example, the banks may need to customize the user interface of Finacle® according to their needs. Finacle® has two different user interface frameworks—Online Services (ONS) and Customer Relationship View (CRV). Therefore, the team working on the customization of the user interface in Finacle® will need to learn these two frameworks. This in turn becomes an effort intensive exercise. In addition, different applications provide different challenges which further add to the effort. Taking the example of Finacle® again, cross-reference of view-options available in ONS and CRV frameworks is not possible which adds to the complexity, of customizing the user interface.
There is a need for a solution that enables enterprises to develop user interfaces for any application without much effort and cost. There is also a need for the solution to enable the development of user interfaces without the developers needing to understand the framework or without any technical intervention in the application. Further, there is a need for the solution to allow the development of user interfaces without coding. Also, there is a need for the solution to provide features in a user interface that enables the user to navigate efficiently.